monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for
david evans.
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someone asked me on sunday how i first came to these tibetan teachings - brought to america by the escaped tibetan lama Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche - and i remembered an interesting aspect of the story. Click “more” to hear about it.
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i think our meditation director for the weekend did a great job of summarizing the focus of the weekend by quoting from a letter to another poet, written by rainer maria rilke:
we have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. if it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us, if there are dangers, we must try to love them. and if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. how could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
so you mustn’t be frightened… if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. you must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside of you?
i’m on retreat this weekend. spending most of the day in silent meditation with a group of twenty other silent folks. doesn’t sound very exciting dialog i’m sure. but the crap that comes up in your own little head when you spend hours in silence is damn entertaining.
i’ve had all kinds of dreams and fantasies, imagining conversations with this person or that and basically letting anything come up. the instruction for this weekend is to touch each thought lightly, instead of just letting it drop. by doing this, i’m trying to get a taste of each one and be more curious. in that way, i’ll cultivate my inner awareness of where these thoughts and daydreams come from and what’s behind them. usually i find behind each thought is some emotion - like fear or frustration or sadness - though each emotion has it’s own unique texture. by touching each thought briefly, i also get closer to the underlying emotional energy that is always there but i’m not generally conscious of.
i counted today, this was my seventh day this year in silent retreat!
i’m wondering if i should get a flu shot this year. my community spirit says no, that helps to breed super-germs. but as soon as i get walloped by this years super-germs i’ll regret not having one.
this weekend i moved to a new sublet in san francisco, living with two friends. this is just like all the fun housesitting i’ve been doing this summer… except now i’m paying rent. on the major plus side, this apartment is on the same public transportation line as work. i can now reduce my contribution to oil consumption - and have a saner commute - maybe even reading *books* on the way to work. how novel.
my spiritual intent and calm abiding goes out the window when a shiny, new, expensive box arrives in the mail. last week my new twelve inch g4 powerbook showed up.
it only took me a couple hours to get all of my files backed up and off of my old-and-busted and then onto the new-hotness. plus some more ram. super smooth transition. i’m writing this on new-hotness right now.
my previous powerbook was fine actually, just 600 mhz too slow for my foolish pride and lacking bluetooth and a writable dvd player. these are essentials in my modern life so i’m hearing. i have serious projects to do. and yes, i am rationalizing this expense. so be it.
two completely unrelated but interesting news items today:
looks like dr. venter’s team has made another order of magnitute improvement in the time required for manufacture of a synthetic virus. both a bold move forward for medicine and another reason all future weapon development in the civilized world should stop.
and comedy central is preparing a farse of the already pretty kitchy show queer eye for the straight guy. their new version, straight plan for the gay man will have a team of straight comedians showing gay men how to pass as heterosexual using poor style, bad manners, and ego-mania.
my mom already reads this blog (aka journal). unlike this poor, imaginary sod.
thanks for the link, brian! (and hi mom!)
“Trying to eliminate Saddam…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible…. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq…. there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”
– George Herbert Walker Bush, from his memoir, A World Transformed (1998)
this is the computer game for me: a myst-like adventure that comes with a biofeedback device. Some of the puzzles require your relaxation and meditative focus to complete - as measured by the biofeedback device.
it looks like the story line also has a strong spiritual component, and the game is shipping for both mac and windows at the same time. good karma there.
here’s a quote from the companion guide:
Into the belly of the whale
The inner path requires a deep commitment
Only persistence allows one to see
beyond the framework of time.
found a fun interview with herbie hancock about apple and his history with digital technology. i was at the apple IIc introduction that he played in san francisco. i seem to remember it was at symphony hall, but i was just a kid then.